Advancements in technology have transformed the life of a human being in many different ways. We have all heard a famous saying ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ and the faults in the economical system drove innovators into creating a decentralized money system, which gave birth to bitcoin and the overall crypto space. The non-fungible token (NFT), a unique and non-interchangeable unit of data stored on the same digital ledger (blockchain) is the solution to art theft. NFT offer solution to digital artists to protect the ownership of their digital art and prevent falsification of their hard work.
WHAT EXACTLY IS A NON-FUNGIBLE TOKEN?
A fungible asset in economics is referred to as something with units that can be easily interchanged — Think money. A 10$ bill can easily be swapped with two $5 notes or ten $1 notes without losing its value. However that is not the case with a non-fungible asset, its unique properties don’t allow it to be interchange with something else easily. A house, A famous art, or even a featured meme. Sure there are copies and images of that famous meme, but there is only one original.NFTs in the digital world can be bought and sold like any other piece of property with each NFT having its own unique transaction hash making it non-replicable and verifying the identity of the owner.
HOW DOES AN NFT WORK AND HOW MUCH IS IT WORTH?
The functioning of NFTs can be explained by comparing the traditional works of art such as paintings with the digital artwork by a modern artist. Though both are valuable precisely because they are one of a kind but digital art can be easily and endlessly duplicated. With NFTs, artwork can be “tokenized” to create a digital license of possession that can be purchased and sold. The record of ownership is stored on a shared ledger known as the blockchain and cannot be forged as the ledger is maintained by masses of computers around the globe.
Theoretically, all can tokenize their work to sell as an NFT but it's the community building and effective marketing strategies that attract buyer and makes an NFT priceless. Some of the top NFT sales for the first week of October 2021 includes:
1. Ringers #109 by Dmitri Cherniak — A concept where strings are wrapped around a set of pegs was brought by an unknown collector for 2100 ETH ($6.93 million.)
2. Fidenza- acclaimed as the most versatile algorithm to date, was sold for 950 ETH ($2.84 million) on September 30, according to Opensea transaction data.
3. Bored Ape #2087 ($2.27 million)-The 9th rarest Ape from the collection of 10,000 Bored Ape NFTs developed by the boredapeyachtclub.
4. Ringers #220 ($2.19 million) — Outputs in Ringers are derived from a unique transaction and generated in Javascript. It features variations in peg count, wraps orientation, sizing and layout.
Like the above-mentioned artwork, Famous classical internet meme are also available as NFT to be bought and sold some of them are:
1. Bad Luck Brian -The creator and the braces-laden, redhead kid in that iconic image sold the NFT of roughly $36,000 in the cryptocurrency Ethereum in March.
2. Disaster Girl — Zoë Roth, better known as Disaster Girl, sold her iconic image for $500,000 in Ethereum in May of 2021.
3. Doge- a cryptocurrency worth around 25cent at the time of writing, sold the simple picture of a Shiba Inu named “Kabosu” that was taken back in 2010 for record-breaking $4 million worth of Ethereum.
4. Famed Pakistani meme ‘Friendship ended with MUDASIR’ was sold as NFT for 20.00 ETH on August 2.
THE STAGES BEHIND DEVELOPING NFT
Though the NFT sector is currently in its infant phase still thousands of NFT are minting every day on several different platforms, the process of developing an NFT involves simple few steps:
The first thing you have to do is to pick the artwork or to create one. Non-fungible tokens can present any digital file. NFT can be of a digital painting, text, music, a video, anything that can be reproduced as a multimedia file.
Once you’ve chosen your digital asset, the next step is to get Ether (ETH). NFTs can be created on other blockchains too but for now, we’ll use the Ethereum network, the most popular one. Minting an NFT costs money also known as the gas fee, so an Ethereum wallet with some ether on it is necessary.
Now that everything is in place, the third step involves choosing a marketplace where we’ll list our NFT. Some of the most popular ones are Mintable, Rarible, and OpenSea.
After listing the NFT successfully on the marketplace. the next step involves waiting for someone to notice your precious token, or you can also market the object yourself, possibly to an existing community of people that would be interested in your work. That’s the most challenging part and has nothing to do with the artistic process itself. The immense competition in the NFT marketplace that makes it incredible also makes it difficult for a creator to sell their work.
NFTs can act as secure documentation of ownership and can be a worthwhile investment for collectors. Creating and selling digital assets might make a lot of sense for creators. But when it comes to buying NFTs for their value as a collectible, they are a speculative investment. Value is uncertain and will fluctuate based on demand for the work itself.
Although NFT’s might be the next big thing. But are they here to stay? Will they be able to keep their value? People paying for digital media that would otherwise be free is a wild idea and something that has never been done before.
WHAT THE FUTURE HOLD
A few months back, the NFT bubble had swollen to immense size. as musical artists such as Grimes sold $6 million worth of crypto art in February, and artist Beeple’s ‘Everyday — The First 5000 Days’ piece pulled in $69 million at Christie's in March, the NFT goldrush was in full swing. By April, however, the average price of NFTs had slumped by over 60% compared to February — leading many gurus to claim the NFT bubble has burst.
the Four key barriers to mass adoption of NFTs are lack of buyers, the hype cycles, Energy consumption, User experience friction because of complex trading mechanisms, though in the future, NFT use cases will only continue to multiply, and may even be linked to everyday activities such as ticket sales, proof of attendance, and battling fraud.
Conclusion
NFTs are designed to give you something that can’t be copied: ownership of the work (though the artist can still retain the copyright and reproduction rights, just like with physical artwork). The solution to preventing digital art robbery lies in NFT, though there are several barriers to its complete acceptance, the future appears bright for digital artists. Disadvantages faced by modern artists decrease the motivation to innovate but the prospect of authenticity and security and financial benefits offered by blockchain technology will urge many artists into creating unique pieces of art